David Starr on Better Engineering Practices - Episode 149

Jul 12, 2021

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This week on the podcast, Jeffrey is welcoming an old friend of his, David Starr! David is a Principal Solutions Architect in the Azure Industry Experiences team at Microsoft where he focuses on helping companies bring their solutions to Azure and the Azure Marketplace, becoming Microsoft partners. David is the founder of ElegantCode.com, has served in numerous leadership roles, and has been an early and consistent advocate for Agile workflow and engineering practices. He is a co-host of his own podcast as well, Azure For Executives.

In this episode, David speaks about better engineering practices, different levels of testing, his favorite tools, and the absolute fundamental engineering practices that developers should be engaging in. He also shares his take on MOQs, shift left testing, pin testing, and more!

Topics of Discussion:

[:14] About The Azure DevOps Podcast, Clear Measure, the new podcast Architect Tips, and Jeffrey’s offer to speak at virtual user groups.

[1:32] About today’s episode with David Starr!

[2:11] Jeffrey welcomes David Starr to the podcast.

[2:32] David shares some of his career highlights and what led him to work at Microsoft.

[8:11] What are some of the great engineering practices that are most applicable today?

[10:53] David shares some key takeaways around having better agility through better engineering practices.

[15:22] A word from Azure DevOps Podcast’s sponsor: Clear Measure.

[15:54] Fundamental engineering practices that all teams should be engaging in.

[18:58] David explains what pin testing is and why it is important.

[20:20] David shares his favorite tools in Visual Studio.

[21:26] How to know what levels of testing to add to your build when you’re getting started.

[22:21] David’s take on MOQs.

[23:35] Talking about different levels of tests.

[23:57] Jeffrey and David discuss the Software as a Service (SaaS) transformation of the Azure DevOps team of going from Visual Studio Team Server to Visual Studio Team Services.

[24:39] David explains the term ‘shift left’ testing.

[25:43] Why shift left and not shift right?

[28:22] Other engineering practices that David advises developers to go after, after the build and testing.

[37:18] Where to learn more about what David is talking about and connect with him online!

[38:12] Jeffrey thanks David for joining the podcast.

Mentioned in this Episode:

Architect Tips — New video podcast!

Azure DevOps

Clear Measure (Sponsor)

.NET DevOps for Azure: A Developer's Guide to DevOps Architecture the Right Way, by Jeffrey Palermo — Available on Amazon!

bit.ly/dotnetdevopsebook — Click here to download the .NET DevOps for Azure ebook!

Jeffrey Palermo’s Youtube